3D Art HW #15 - Final Polish and Display

 This week, my task was creating a finalized version of the project I've been working on since bootcamp ended, my 3D scene.  All of the criticisms have been addressed, and everything in the scene has been polished up as best as I can manage.  The background mountains have been replaced with a more modular, less processor heavy version rendered in Zbrush, allowing for multiple surface textures - giving them their snow-capped peaks.  The rocks and ground mesh have been replaced with lower-resolution models for the sake of allowing the game to run more smoothly without sacrificing visuals (and, incidentally, fixing some of those nasty seams that were on the ground plane).  The ground plane has had it's collisions assigned to a significantly lower-res invisible version of itself for the sake of the navmesh.  The moon model has been reoriented to better match the lighting direction, and moved further away to make it look more realistic.  And, of course, the visuals of the level have been given a general polish, just to make it all look extra nice.  

My progress at this point, unfortunately, has been stymied by one inexplicable technical issue - whenever the level starts running, the interactable gemstone (my pickuppable object) vanishes from the scene and the outliner, for no apparent reason.  Neither I, nor my peers who are more experienced with the engine, have been able to figure out what's going on (possible corruption of the level or asset have been suggested, but no recourse has been discovered).  Barring any last minute revelations or aid, this issue may go unfixed, but at least I made the visuals as polished as possible, which is the most important thing in the end.

In any case, I think I've rambled on about the thing for long enough, so here are some pictures of it:

Common Art HW #15 - Project Final Delivery/Cut Round 1

Here at the end of the semester, we were tasked with creating one final presentation of our Common Art VR project before the end, showing off what we'd accomplished and determining who gets the cut.  As always, I handled the slides on the environment and the lighting, which are presented below.  This week, on the advice of my teammates, I presented the content as if this would be the first time the audience would see it, as if we were making a fresh pitch/proof of concept.

3D Art Homework #14 - Mountains and Skydomes

 This week, we were tasked to further iterate upon our 3D scenes, featuring a custom animated skybox and custom mountains made in World Machine.  I also gave the texture for the runestone a little touch up, and created a custom moon model and material.  Here is how all that looks in my scene right now:

3D Art HW #13 - Pillar Game Res

 For this week, we were tasked to finalize the game-res version of our main stone mesh.  Last week, I actually already had a game res version of the runestone done along with my high res version, but I received some criticism about the sculpt - mainly, that the cracks on the surface needed some rework to get in line work the Orb style, and that I needed to exaggerate the wear on some of the edges.  Here is the revised version of the high res sculpt, with said adjustments

Once I'd gotten that taken care of, I took the finalized version of the game res sculpt back into Substance Painter, and re-created the textures.  Here is the result of that:

Finally, here is what the final version of it looks like in engine.  Also worth noting is that, in line with the other suggestions I received, I reworked the light to prevent the runestone from falling into shadow.  I also gave the runestone a base, fashioned from one of the rock models rotated to create a relatively flat surface.  Speaking of the rocks, I also addressed the issues that caused some of the rock models to lose their textures, too.

Common Art HW #13

 This week, my team was tasked with continuing to work on both our art style guide via the presentation, and work in parallel on the proxy of our VR experience.  Once again, I worked on the slides for the environment and lighting, to show off the progress I made this week in those areas.  Here they are:

3D Art HW #12 - Pillar High-Res

 This week around, we were tasked to start working on the final iteration of my runestone.  I started out by creating a high-res version of the stone in ZBrush, with a great deal of surface detail (runes and engravings included, of course).  While I was at it, I also cut a hole into the mesh in the shape of the gemstone I'm using as my new interactable object.

From there, I took the game resolution version of the runestone out of ZBrush and into Substance Painter.  I then baked the maps from the high resolution to the game resolution.  Then, I finalized the surface textures of the runestone, creating a texture for the stone and orange pigment for the recesses.

Then, I took the game-res mesh and the textures, and brought them into Unreal to replace the Proxy.  I also brought in the new mesh for interactable item (the gem, with a simple glowing texture) to replace the old idol one.  I also created a few new smaller grass variants and spread them around with the foliage brush, and rejiggered the textures on the ground plane to hide the seams a little better.  Here is the final result, as it appears in-engine.

Common Art HW #12 - Custom Style Guide/Starting Prototype

 This week, we were instructed to continue iterating upon past week's work by further fleshing out our own style guide.  In addition, we were also instructed to begin working on the prototype version of our experience.  Once again, I worked on the Environment and Lighting/Atmosphere slides, as well as creating a large suite of proxy models for the prototype.  Here are the results of that.